


Time in a Bottle

by Beth Harker (Beth_Harker)



Category: Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Canon Era, Fluff, Gen, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Post musical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-08 15:50:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16432382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beth_Harker/pseuds/Beth%20Harker
Summary: There's a street peddler who sells jars of air from all over the world.  Davey, Katherine, and Crutchie use him as their inspiration to make Jack a very special gift.





	Time in a Bottle

"Jars of air! Fresh air in jars! Revolutionary jarring techniques! Only ten cents for the freshest air you'll ever breathe! Promote spiritual purity and vigorous good health, with the help of nature's finest resource! Escape the squalor of this filthy metropolis! Send your lungs on a journey to far away lands! Many varieties of air available from --"

"Extensive Bird Migration Causes Sanitation Issues!!" shouted Davey Jacobs, far too loudly, judging by the way that several members of the crowd of people gathered around the street peddler jerked their head back to glare at him. 

“The birds! Are! Migrating!” Davey repeated. One small girl dropped the jar that she had been holding, and Jack, who had been standing a whole five feet away, leapt towards Davey like he was expecting to find him under attack. There was a circle forming around him. 

"The birds..." Davey said, rather meekly, finding that he'd gained an inordinate amount of attention, and he didn't quite know what to do with it, "they're... Um... Well there are a lot of them. That's what happens when birds migrate. They move in flocks, but the sheer amount of them is a scientific phenomenon, and it's rare... Maybe not as rare as the papers are making it out to be, considering it happens every year, and I haven't noticed much of a difference in the bird population, but..."

"But his little brother here is dying of bronchiolateral consumptivitis." 

Jack pushed Les forward, who coughed with such a pitiful look that Davey might have believed that he truly was on death's door, if he hadn't known better. 

They sold fifteen papers in ten minutes.

"Why'd you holler like that, huh Davey?" Jack asked, as the trio was making its way to their next spot. "Not that I mind, but it ain't like you."

"He hates the air man because he always talks about having air from -" Les cleared his throat, straightened his back, and went on in his very best Davey voice, "a certain city in New Mexico."

Jack chuckled, but there was an edge to it if Davey wasn't mistaken.

"He's scared you'll leave," Les went on cheerfully. Davey tried to grab onto him and clamp his mouth shut, but the smaller boy ducked away too quickly. "'Cause he's finally having fun and he doesn't want you leave. I overheard him talking about it with Crutchie."

"I hate him because he lies," Davey corrected. "The air man! It's the air man who lies, not Crutchie. I don't hate Crutchie. I like him a lot, but he... the air man... can't possibly have air from Mount Everest, the Swiss Alps, and the French countryside in those jars, and even if he did, half of them are cracked. If there was any air in them it would escape."

"Look on the bright side, Davey, Santa Fe ain't so far off as the rest of those places."

"He says he has air from the moon!" Davey exclaimed, completely missing the point. "And he always follows us around. We've started out in a different spot every day this week, and low and behold, he's been at each one of them. If it's not a conspiracy I don't know what is."

"You think I could go to Santa Fe and start up a business sellin' jars of air from New York?" 

"Jack!"

Jack gave Davey a playful shove, "It's like Crutchie's always sayin', everybody wants to come here. Maybe there's some kid in Santa Fe cryin' into his pillow at night 'cause he ain't never seen a street full of peddlers, or a building more 'an two stories tall before."

"Do you ever cry because you can't go to Santa Fe?" Les asked. This time Davey didn't try to hush him, seeing as how he was also rather interested in the answer. 

"Nah," Jack said. "And I can't go to Santa Fe until I get myself a better business model."

"And what would that be," asked Davey sullenly.

"Well, first of all, I need three really big jars. Really really big. Enormous enough to bottle up the most important things New York’s got to offer."

"What's that?" Asked Les.

"Your brother for one. Katherine and Crutchie for two and three. I guess I'll need a jar for you too, kid, only I think I can get you into an old pickle jar if I tried hard enough."

"I'm not a pickle," Les whined. "Davey, tell him I'm not a pickle! He'll listen to you." 

"He's not calling you a pickle. He's calling you short, which you are."

"Davey! Jack, tell Davey I'm not short, he'll listen to you."

Jack bent down, pretending to scrutinize Les. "Hate to break it to you, Dave, but your brother is average size for a kid his age. Also, he's a pickle."

Faster than Davey could believe, Jack had leapt to his feet, and it was a good thing because Les was giving chase. 

The speed at which Les ran was firm proof that he wasn't a pickle, and the talent with which Jack evaded him was good indication that he wasn't one either. Davey, for his part, grinned and protected the newspapers long enough for Les and Jack to have their game, and for all conversation of the air jars and air jar peddlers to be abandoned for the time being. 

\--------

"If Jack wants a jar of air we can give it to him easily enough," said Katherine. “No street paddlers needed, thank you very much.”

"From Santa Fe? What’re we gonna do, rob a bank, use the money to buy train tickets, go to Santa Fe without him, collect a jar of air, then come back home?" asked Davey, arms folded. He was really sick and tired of the air peddler, and he was even more sick and tired of discussing him.

"Jack'd kill us if we went to Santa Fe without him," Crutchie said, like it was a real possibility. "He'd kill us if we robbed a bank without him, too."

"Wouldn't want to miss out on the fun, right?" said Davey. 

"Wouldn't want us robbing banks without him around to protect us from ourselves," mused Katherine. "Boy's got a savior complex. That's not to say he wouldn't be the cause of half the trouble, because you know that he would, but he wouldn't figure it out until he'd tried it, and by then it would be too late."

"What if we gave him a jar of air from New York?" Crutchie suggested. 

"Are you trying to suggest that jars give air a more cultivated quality?” asked Davey.

"Nah, but get this, what if we breathed in it? 'Cause when we breathe it's air that comes out, ain't it? If we breathed in a jar, I betcha anything that Jack would like it a lot."

Crutchie, Davey, and Katherine looked at each other. A second later, and with no further words passing between them, they'd made their decision. 

\-----

"One, two, three... Ow!"

Davey rubbed his forehead, which had just come into contact with Crutchie's and Katherine's, as they all tried to breathe at the same time into the rather ornate jam jar they'd found in one of Katherine's cupboards. 

"I'll get some straws," Katherine suggested.

The second time, huffing, and puffing, and breathing with all their might into the straws Katherine had provided, went a little better. At least nobody was injured this time around.

"Wait," Katherine said, snatching the jar away just as Davey was twisting it shut. She opened it up again, took a second to gear up and collect as much saliva in her mouth as she possibly could, and then spat into the jar before handing it back to Davey. 

"What was that?" Davey asked. 

"One of those spit-shake things that you all do. He hardly ever initiates them with me, so I'm giving him one to remember on a more permanent basis.

Davey managed to avoid the urge to make a face. "That sounds fair," he said, so casually that he was proud of himself for it.

"Our air floated out," Crutchie reminded them. 

"Round two?" Asked Katherine.

\------

"Is that a jar of spit?" Jack asked, upon receiving his gift. It may have been coming from the three people he loved best in all the world, but that didn't change the fact that it appeared to be a jar of spit. 

"It's a jar of air," gushed Crutchie. "And Katherine spat in it."

"The air is from our very own lungs," said Katherine, "which makes it especially rare and valuable."

"It's a one of a kind gift," Davey finished. "Not for purchase."

Jack laughed, and kissed each of them quickly.

"Best gift I ever got," he said, with a loving gaze at his new jar of air, and an even more loving gaze at the three people who had given it to him.


End file.
